Blaming the parents - TV, media and society

[Dibdob59]

I am tired, so, so, so tired of this blame. 

When I first came to this board I was crippled with guilt and despair but I found a group of people who finally 'got it'. They understood what my family was going through and I could finally speak about the unspeakable.

I was supported and shown where to find advice, reports and stories that made me sit crying saying "yes, yes, yes" as I finally knew there were others whose children had exhibited the same chaotic behaviour as mine.  I was encouraged not to blame myself and just for a while I began to do just that - until I read the link below.  It transported me straight back to feeling the crushing weight of judgement and blame placed on parents by society.  It was even more  distressing as the remarks were made in posts from members of this site.

https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=270780.0

So, if even on this site we are being told that we, the parents, caused BPD in our children what hope do we have? 

Our objective is to better understand the struggles our child faces and to learn the skills to improve our relationship and provide a supportive environment and also improve on our own emotional responses, attitudes and effectiveness as a family leaders

[lever.]

I try to be honest with myself Dibdob and i know that sometimes in the past I have been very poor with boundaries. Also myself and my husband got into a bad cop/good cop situation where I was lenient and he was trying to set boundaries-which he didn't always do in the best way ie he yelled and shouted.

This wasn't going on all the time though and we did a lot of good things as a family.

I don't think we are entirely responsible for the disorder-there is a biological underpinning and possibly lack of oxygen at birth is implicated.

I dislike the way in which the default position is "blame the parents".

It isn't long ago that autism and schizophrenia was blamed on mothers (Refrigerator mothers and double-binds)-research has now shown this to be rubbish and the same will happen with BPD.

Take a look at the article "did I cause this".

Please don't let an unjustified feeling of embarrassment or shame cause you to become isolated.

[mggt]

I think if i hear one more time its the parents fault im going to jump off the roof (not really) Outsiders have no idea how much

we try pray and want our loved ones to be free from BPD we are the ones that take them to all appts check on them nightly      to see if they are still alive who locked our  bedroom door at night because we are afraid of them .We have to hide all pills money knives just in case . Make sure they take there meds watch them swallow them pray that they keep and get a

job pray they dont get killed while driving there car because someone cut them off . Worry especially if they have a child how can they possibly raise them properly with there cray ideas and lack of responsibiltiy .  Make sure they are bathing common hygene wati for the phone or text to ring and your heart sinks everytime thinking know what.  Not able to go out of town because you cant trust them in your own home.and if they have there own place with our gd did she lock doors is she smoking drinking what type of people are there is she watching our gd the list just gos on and on so do NOT blame me or parents

because we have done it all and then some how about a pat on the back for us parents SO THANK YOU PARENTS FOR HELPING OUR BPDS WITH ALL THE LOVE AND SUPPORT ANY HUMANS CAN POSSIBLY DO   

[llbee814]

I hear you ladies and understand your feelings.  It is so very difficult to "hear" some of the posts.  We are all experiencing our dear borderline people and our connections with them differently, despite many similarities amongst their "issues."  Add in that we are all different and more than likely have our own issues to deal with and it is a recipe for confusion.  My viewpoint may be less than popular, but I feel very strongly that it is important to be able (or arrogant enough, ) to blow off what you feel "blames" you on here.  Take what helps, leave the rest.

The tools on the right are great... .and in a perfect world would be, well, perfect.  Unfortunately, we don't live in a perfect world.  Sometimes, nothing works.  I don't care how well you validate or use set or stick to your boundaries or stay in your wise mind or whatever,  if your BPD person is going to disregulate, that is not on you.

Just like it is not on you that your child has this disorder.  All of the latest research supports this.  Common sense also supports this.  I have four children, one of whom is affected.  Why not my other three, that were raised under the same circumstances? 

Life is difficult enough without people feeling judged in a place where they come for support.  I believe that we are all doing our best and obviously, we are still trying to improve on that.  Otherwise, we wouldn't be here.  I think we are pretty good people!

[qcarolr]

Well, I feel like attitudes in many areas around me are slowly changing. There is more acceptance of the neuroscience behind BPD and other types of mental illnesses. I have personally chosen to turn down the volume or even press "MUTE" on much of the popular media. It is just not relevant to my life.

When my DD was first dx with BPD in 2009 at age 23, my therapist had already mentioned her concerns that this was what was going on. I had no idea what Borderline Personality Disorder was about. I was dx bipolar in 1989 (was dd was 3) and had read a lot about mental illness. DD had dx of ADHD, learning disability, bipolar, anxiety... .starting in 1990. I was a very active advocate in her life and our community and school.

My T gave me the book "I Hate You, Don't Leave Me".  It's basic premise was that sexual abuse in childhood led to BPD. That was the only cause this book seemed to talk about. Boy did that trigger my mommy guilt - not even knowing how this had happened to DD. Not having properly protected DD. Maybe I was not in the best state of mind to get the full message of this book. It did introduce me to S.E.T. communication model.

And then I found bpdfamily. The nice list to the right was here yet, but the tools and lessons were available on other boards. Whew! A well grounded, compassionate, truly helpful place that I could get support that counted.

I still keep the volume down on media. It has an agenda to get ratings even if there is value in the product. Go with eyes and ears open.

qcr

[.cup.car]

I'm guilty of some of those comments, and I'm sorry.

I think what I was trying to get at, is that being an enabler when you have a child with BPD often makes things much worse.

In the case of the Dr. Phil episode, despite all the time the family called the cops, they never pressed charges and this allowed her behavior to continue. Despite the fact that their eldest daughter moved out to avoid the chaos and focus on her studies, that never set off red flags that maybe if an 18 year old understands the situation, why don't they? Despite the daughter being behind 86 assignments in online schooling, they never explored other options for schooling. It took the girl's uncle to write to Dr. Phil out of sheer embarassment before anything was done.

Being an enabler isn't specific to BPD - my cousin's been described by newspapers as a "habitual criminal" because he's been into hard drugs since he was 17/18/19, and my aunt still insists it's the justice system's fault and "police brutality" and a whole bunch of other nonsense.

[Kate4queen]

Sometimes we enable with the best of intentions--to stop the PWBPD going off on a sibling or a spouse or to try and make sure a family occasion goes off well. Sometimes we enable our BPD out of fear that they will harm themselves.

I don't blame myself for those behaviors. At the time, they seemed to be the only way to make an intolerable living situation work.

If I'd known what was really going on with my son all those years ago would I have acted and reacted differently? Probably, but I did the best I could with the knowledge I had.

My eldest son who is 25 and went through a period of being really angry with me because I enabled his younger brother recently said to me. "I get it now, Mum. What you did, you did out of love."

That meant more to me than anything.

So admitting you could have done better- (hindsight is a wonderful thing, ) doesn't in my mind equate to blaming myself for my son's BPD.

[lever.]

I completely agree Kate4queen.

We do the best we can for everyone in a given situation.

Making an honest evaluation of our own responses and looking where we could do better isn't the same as saying we are to blame for the BPD.

Its sometimes very easy to think what we should do when we aren't in the middle of a horrid situation.

The important thing is that we know ourselves that we are doing our best rather than what anyone else thinks.

When I was in the middle of a very difficult situation and felt that a lot of people were blaming me and believing untruths about me I had a mantra "they can take my reputation but not my character".

[Dibdob59]

Not blaming myself is a constant work in progress.  Second guessing what I did and ruminating about it is a habit that has been extremely hard for me to break. I believe we all here coped with crazy, chaotic behaviours in the best way we could at the time.  For me that did not always mean giving in to demands.

My distress and anxiety are triggered by comments such as the those within the link contained in my initial post above, particularly the following:

peace in steel town

My father has a saying, animals and children will do whatever you let them get away with. Kids don't grow up in a vacuum. If you model bad behavior, they will learn bad behavior. If you don't teach them boundaries, they will never respect them. We had a similar problem. My wife admitted that it was easier just to give the kid what she wanted, and the situation will calm down. She taught dd that if you act out big enough, mom will cave. We had that time and time again. Things are better now, no most of the time means no. Kids are looking for boundaries, As much as they don't like them, they feel safer with them. Personally, I think that this behaviour is a cause of BPD. The child learns that to act out is to get what you want. The problem is, that what first starts out as a tool to get what you want becomes a behaviour pattern, and they can't turn it off any more. Going ballistic at the drop of a hat becomes a habit they can't break.

It seems some people are keen to over simplify what was/is for us a complex and traumatic family environment.  They then stand in judgement of what we, as parents, have done in an over simplified way. This to me is the worst kind of devaluation and blaming and is totally counter productive.

Only when society pays some respect to this disorder as a serious mental illness (not simply a result of bad parenting) will real progress start to be made. Until then we parents seem to be stuck with being labelled as the scapegoat. This will not help our BPD children, or us.

[Meadowslark]

Dibdob, I'm not a parent. I'm the child of two people, one with NPD (dad), and whose sibling is diagnosed BPD (younger sister). So the best I can do for you is to give you the perspective of the functional child of these two people, with an exceptionally dysfunctional sibling.

I can tell you that sometimes it's not the parents. Sometimes the parents try their hardest to do the best they possibly can with the kid and the kid still turns out messed up. Sometimes BPD is not caused by the parents, but by the child's own brain, their environment, their genetics... .Sometimes it's a combination of all of the above. It's really tough to say!

I trust that you did what you thought was best, given the knowledge and tools you had. I trust that you had every good intention in your heart when parenting your child.

Please don't blame yourself. American media is all about fear and guilt and sensationalism. I have no doubts you did the best you could, and I'm sure dozens of other parents here would agree.